1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for making a supporting body for the lock of a motor vehicle and to the supporting body obtained by means of the method.
2. Description of the Related Art
As is known, a closing system for a door of a motor vehicle basically comprises a lock and a striker mounted, respectively, on the door and on a fixed portion of the bodywork in the proximity of the compartment of the door itself (or, more rarely, vice versa).
The lock basically comprises a closing mechanism designed to be coupled in a releasable way with the striker to obtain a relative blocking between the lock and the striker itself when the door is closed, and a control assembly interacting with the closing mechanism and designed to provide a set of functions, such as, for example, mechanical opening and/or electrical opening and/or remote opening with user identification (passive-entry system), electrical closing, disabling/enabling of the opening of the door from the outside and/or from the inside of the motor vehicle (external-safety and internal-safety or dead-lock functions), and centralized control of the safety functions for all the locks of the motor vehicle via key or remote control.
In order to obtain the functions mentioned above, the control assembly comprises: a plurality of levers, at least one of which interacts with the closing mechanism; a plurality of electric motors for the control of the aforesaid levers via corresponding mechanical transmissions; a plurality of microswitches for detecting the position of various mobile elements; and an electrical circuit, which connects the microswitches and the electric motors with an electrical connector, which, in turn, can be connected to the electrical wiring system of the motor vehicle.
The various components constituting the control assembly are generally housed in a single supporting body which can be rigidly fixed to the door of the motor vehicle and is usually constituted by a shaped casing having a thickness smaller than the other dimensions.
The electrical circuit is formed by a plurality of conductive paths usually obtained by blanking and bending of a strip of metal material, normally copper or brass. In particular, the paths are formed initially in a single body, i.e., joined to one another via connecting portions or links, and are rendered independent at the moment of fixing of the lock to the supporting body by means of blanking of the aforesaid connecting portions.
The known modalities of fixing of the lock to the supporting body are basically two.
According to a first possibility, the conductive paths are englobed in a flexible element in the form of a foil (commonly referred to in the sector as “flexfoil”) made of insulating material, generally plastic material, and fixed to the supporting body in a mechanical way, for example, via riveting.
Alternatively, the conductive paths can be co-molded to the supporting body of the lock. This modality of assembly calls for the execution of a series of operations.
In particular, the conductive paths, connected to one another to form a single body, are positioned inside a mold; next, via injection of plastic material, co-molding of an intermediate element of pre-set conformation is carried out.
At this point, the blanking operation of the connecting portions of the conductive paths is carried out directly on the intermediate element, which is then positioned inside a further mold for co-molding of the supporting body of the lock.
In both cases, it is not possible to obtain a supporting body in which the conductive paths are arranged on a number of layers set on top of one another. In fact, in the case where the conductive paths are carried by the flexible element, the foil conformation of the latter, having an infinitesimal thickness, in itself prevents the possibility of generating layers of conductive paths set on top of one another.
In the other case, the supporting and positioning close together of a number of layers of conductive paths inside the mold in which the injection of the plastic material is performed proves to be practically unrealizable, on account of the small thickness of the body that is formed.
The impossibility of obtaining multilayer conductive paths within the supporting body of the lock can become a markedly penalizing limit above all as the number of functions performed by the lock itself, and, consequently, the total number of paths necessary, increases. The use of single-layer paths cannot but entail a high encumbrance and complexity of the electrical control circuit, with obvious negative repercussions on the extension of the supporting body that is designed to house the circuit.
The purpose of the present invention is to provide a method for making a supporting body for the lock of a motor vehicle which will enable, in a simple and economically advantageous way, the drawbacks related to the known methods and specified above to be overcome.